Safely, Quickly
by FerrisWheeling
Summary: Kanaya feels that she is ready for a change of pace, and by that means she has got to get the ever-loving hell out of New York or else she'll end up scrawling Bible verses on Subway walls in pigeon blood. ONESHOT


_Some background for this: an AU, similar (or perhaps the same) as what 'Sometimes' is set in. I'm not entirely sure because continuity isn't my thing. Very Kanaya-centric. Guest-starring Gamzee, Karkat, Terezi, and Vriska. The general notion for this is that Kanaya was raised in a small Washington town that I am calling Crush Station for lack of an official name; she splits after highschool, goes to New York, kicks all kinds of ass while wearing a pretty lime peacoat with matching flats and necklace (not actually featured), and then the following happens. _

The girl just falls and you shouldn't be surprised but you are anyway. She was thin enough to fly away in an errant breeze and the bags under her eyes that not even makeup could hide…oh God, she hasn't slept in ages you would bet. Her giraffe knees buckle under her and she ends up off-center of the catwalk in a pile of bones and clothes you don't think are all that attractive. The entire room gasps and people are upon her immediately. They say she isn't breathing. They say to call 911. And you guess others do that but you are stricken in your seat next to Thaddeus Rumboldt and you are so scared.

"Thaddeus…Thaddeus, did you _see _that?" You whisper apprehensively. He grunts and nods in recognition.

"Eh, don't worry yourself, Kan. She's not one of our girls."

Not one of our girls.

Oh.

Of course.

Thaddeus cares, you know he does in his weird little doting way, or at least he cares about you. You know his care maybe only extends to his own too-thin women, the ones wearing his designs that are actually yours, the ones that report to him. To him, that girl was just competition and now she's down for the count so he has a better chance. So Darwinian. (So Alternian).

* * *

><p>You go home straight after that. The girl is carted off to the hospital in an ambulance with a still heart and even if they manage to revive her, she's been dead long enough that she'll be a vegetable. A strict diet of cocaine and laxatives does that to people. The show progresses and Thaddeus is going to have Myrtle and Lorna out there in no time, sprouting the feathers of his spring collection. You don't think you could stomach sticking around for that. You pretend that somebody calls you and dash out.<p>

In the security of your too-big too-shiny bathroom, you strip out of all your elegant clothes and stare at yourself in the enormous mirror that Thaddeus bought you for your twenty-fifth wriggling day, just this last September. It has remained spotless ever since and the silver frame glows brighter than the lights.

You look too much like that girl. Your hipbones look like gauche dinnerplates lodged into your anatomy and you can feel each breath go between your rolling ribs. Your sternum creates little ridges across your flat chest. You can see all the tendons twitch and bob in your throat as you gulp nervously. Your needle-pricked fingers with the pretty green polish on them trail over the scoop in your abdomen. That's your stomach, you realize. What's left of it at least. All of your organs are inconceivably crammed into that little hollow there. Oh dear. You don't like this; you don't like this at all.

After inspecting your kitchen you find that you have no carbohydrates to be found. Non-fat yogurt, chamomile tea, grapefruits and celery stalks and pomegranates that you juice yourself. You don't particularly remember this happening to you; you never consciously weeded out your pantry like that. You just adopted tips from your coworkers and Thaddeus because it isn't anorexia when you aren't striving for self-destruction, when all you want is to be healthy and better yourself. Right?

That night you curl in bed and feel empty.

* * *

><p>In the morning you get up and almost eat your regular grapefruit breakfast. Then you pause and change your mind. No. No grapefruit today. It tastes bitter anyways. You consider what to have and think that you haven't eaten biscuits and gravy in a very long time. Not since you went out to breakfast before class began in your early years of college.<p>

You pop in the first café you find and even though you can't even get halfway through your breakfast because you feel like you'll explode a tad bit messily, it feels better than grapefruit. You take the leftovers in a Styrofoam box and resolve to have them today for lunch, even if you will stand out like a sore thumb; everybody you work with has a lunch break but they never use it to eat. Eating in public isn't something that happens where you work.

* * *

><p>Thaddeus looks at your critically. You're going out on the runway tonight, wearing a pretty Asian-inspired dress that you helped him design, and then created almost entirely on your own. You think the dress looks really nice on you and make a mental note to contact the tailor you worked with for this again in the future. Thaddeus, however, looks a stone's throw from pleased.<p>

"You've put on some weight." He says blankly. You shrug.

"Yes. Is this problematic?" You nod down at yourself, feeling defensive. Your stomach is no longer concave, but merely flat. You thought it looked nice on your, looked much healthier, and anyway, you feel uncomfortable when you realize you used to be five foot seven and roughly one hundred and ten pounds.

Thaddeus sniffs a little but doesn't press the issue. "You're on in two minutes."

* * *

><p>You track down the tailor for that dress, and realize he isn't actually a tailor. He just knows the guy who was supposed to be in that day, but 'got sick' (which means he drank too much last night and there was no way he was getting out of bed before four in the afternoon) and so called this guy to cover for him. He's really tall and lanky and likes flowing clothes and patterns, but the only thing he's good at fashion-wise is taking measurements. When you mention color theory to him, he stares at you blankly.<p>

And you are at ease around him, too, because while the fashion industry is more progressively-minded than most other places, there is still some friction between trolls and humans. You find humans to be perfectly acceptable in general but you would be more comfortable around a troll, which this young man happens to be.

He's a funny guy and you ask if he'd like to go get a coffee with you after you finish up at work. He enthusiastically agrees and you find him loitering around your car when you leave for the night. You ask his name.

"Gamzee Makara."

"Nice to meet you, Mister Makara. I am Kanaya Maryam."

* * *

><p>Through Gamzee, you meet new people. Funny, wonderful people that you immediately take a shining to. You learn over coffee—not really, because you ordered tea and he got hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles—that he lives with his moirail and his moirail's matesprit. At least the matesprit is hanging around these days; she appears to be notoriously flighty and sometimes will leave for weeks on end. You say you think that they all sound incredibly charming and he offers to bring them around sometime.<p>

Same time, same place, Friday night.

* * *

><p>That Friday, you are introduced to Karkat Vantas and Terezi Pyrope. They are not the general populace's definition of good company, or even socially acceptable, but you find them intensely interesting. Karkat is tiny and grumpy. You approve of his clothes but they are all far too big on him. When you attempt to ask him why he doesn't buy clothes that fit, he beats you into silence with a barrage of sizzling curses that you have to admit are, at times, clever. Terezi has no concept of an inside voice or mind filter and she is even tinier than Karkat. And, oh goodness, her fashion sense is a sin against creation. So bad that even the fact she is blind cannot make it okay. She seems to get a kick out of your dismayed reaction to her rainbow tie-dye jeans and dragon print shirt that appears not to have been washed in a few days.<p>

The four of you stay there until the coffeehouse closes. You cannot bear to see them leave so soon and invite them back to your condominium. All three of them seem in awe that you live in a condo, and their jaws all but hit the floor when you open up the door and lead them inside.

"It smells like money!" Terezi exclaims, rubbing her face in your gauzy curtains. Gamzee is thoroughly distracted by your thick carpeting, squishing his toes into it, and Karkat just stares at you.

"What do you _do_ for a living?" He gapes.

"I'm a model and designer, for Thaddeus Rumboldt." You say as nonchalantly as you can. This answer spurs Karkat over to Gamzee.

"You didn't tell us she was integrated into society, assbite!" He snaps and you chuckle. "How the fuck are we supposed to stay in her good graces now?" But Gamzee is too absorbed by your carpet to answer.

* * *

><p>Thaddeus slips his hand between your thighs. You repress a delicate, disgusted shudder.<p>

"What's this?" He demands.

"What do you mean?"

"This…this…" He gestures wildly with his free hand, glaring at your legs like they've done something wrong. "This fat!" He finally accuses, hatefully choking out that last damning word.

"I feel intense remorse that I am no longer your ideal construct of bone and skin." You say in a low voice, knowing that this is an inappropriately sarcastic response, but he is being insensitive and rude. You are yet to breach one hundred and twenty five pounds, and he calls you fat. Perfect. He has always been very specific.

He looks like he will hit you for a moment before relying on his hands to angrily shoo you from his office. You leave with your head in the air and your back straight. He will not get the better of you.

* * *

><p>Karkat drags himself into your condo well into the evening, crying and huddled in on himself. You immediately surround him with your arms and steer him to your couch, settling him into your lap and rubbing his shaky back slowly.<p>

"What is it?" You ask when he's calmed down enough to talk.

"Fuck…I just…I…Gamzee…and…" He gulps several times and shivers himself into placation eventually. "Terezi left again. I guess shit was getting a little too black between us and one of us always leaves when that starts happening because…because…oh God this sounds so cheesy but because I never want to hate her like that. I don't want to hate her at all actually, and she doesn't want to hate me either. So she just left this morning and she didn't even say goodbye." He gives a trapped wail and you hold him a little tighter. "And…and…Gamzee's getting too fucking weird for me. He spent almost two hours today just sitting on the window sill and looking at the empty lot next door. He's creeping me out and I can't even get him to eat a pie or anything. And then he just fucking blew it and was hiding around the apartment laughing like a fucking lunatic. I…I hid in the clothes hamper but he found me and I thought he was going to kill me."

He doesn't talk after that. You don't either.

* * *

><p>In his cold office, Thaddeus tells you to lose the weight or he's kicking you out.<p>

"Do you think I need you for success? Because I bloody well don't." He lies. You both know you are a key part of his team. Before you came along, a small-town West Coast girl thinking about making a life for herself in New York City, he was doing okay. Then he signed you as a model and you tweaked design after design and he made more money. Symbiotic.

You walk out of his office without talking to him. You've been losing sleep from the nerves that his constant complaints are causing. Your hands have started shaking so you can't sew very well anymore. You, Kanaya Maryam, are done with his bullshit.

He yells you out of the building, all but frothing at the mouth. You don't look over your shoulder as you slip into your car and drive off.

You are leaving New York City. You are leaving the East Coast. And you are returning to the one place on Earth you can call home.

* * *

><p>"I haven't been there in five, six years. I left a few months after I graduated highschool." You explain to your friends. Friends. You have lived in this city for years and these, you realize, are your only true friends here. "I doubt anything much has changed."<p>

"Could we go with you?" Terezi asks for them. They all look haggard and stressed.

"I don't see why not. But what have you got to get away from?"

None of them say anything for a while. You search each of their three faces and find nothing that gives you a clue.

"This city…" Gamzee begins but his throat is scratchier than usual and he has to clear it. "This city is spilling with poison, sis. Motherfucking drowning in it."

* * *

><p>The four of you leave two weeks after. It takes that long to pack, to sell your nice car and buy a ratty but practical camper van as replacement, to realize that this city has nothing left for you lot—you learn that none of you are native to New York but don't ask for their backstories quite yet. During this time, you move into their apartment, because Thaddeus stops by your condo daily and if you don't answer his catcalls, he slips a note under your door. He alternates between calling you a hateful bitch who doesn't know what's good for her and begging you to come back. You know he's losing money. It gives you a wicked feeling of retribution.<p>

Everybody bundles into your camper, one person driving and the other three curled in a nest of blankets and pillows and familiar bodies and the occasional suitcase that sneaks a pointy corner in (or that could just be Terezi's fish hook elbows). The van tears out of New York and speeds along the highway, sticking roughly along the Canadian border and you don't stop unless the gas tank ticks too low. It doesn't take long for a certain hysterical fever to descend into everybody there, the kind of thing that makes the air smell sickly and gives everyone nightmares so they twist and mewl in their sleep. The kind that turn brief city lights into eyes, criticizing sunbaked eyes.

A gritty taste develops along you tongue and in the back of your throat, a thick texture that you can't shake. When you drive, the road swims in front of you and your claws leave furrows in the faux-leather of the steering wheel. Even though it's so cold inside since the van's heater doesn't work, you sweat. It feels like you are just rocking along a Hunter Thompson rollercoaster except there is a noticeable lack of transparently enticing situations made acceptable by drugs.

You get from New York to Idaho in two days. Karkat is driving now, Terezi staying up in the passenger seat. If he isn't sleeping, she won't sleep either. You are in the back swirled around Gamzee and you feel awful. You've been getting progressively worse as the trip wears on but he isn't afraid to cradle you as you sweat and shiver; he knows your fever isn't something he can catch. He tells you things will smooth themselves out once you get back home and you believe him, but in the meantime you have to suffer through hell.

On a shimmering stretch of highway under a bright full moon, you bolt up and gasp for Karkat to pull over. He jumps and swerves clumsily off the road, a little too far so that the van stops in a clump of tall sweet grass and yarrow. Your stomach lurching, you swing the side door open and stumble out. Dirt and gravel grind into your knees and palms as you drop down and throw up. Gamzee sits in the doorway and pats your back. Karkat makes a tiny gagging sound and looks away; you somehow don't quite care that he gets squeamish around vomit.

"Sorry." You breathe shakily after you realize you have nothing left to give. Gamzee hands you a bottle of water and you rinse your mouth out, crawling back into the van. You slam the door behind you. Everybody is quiet because nobody really wants to take charge. So you do. "How about we just stay here and everybody sleeps? We're almost there; even if we take this break we'll make Crush Station by morning."

That's all that needs to be said. Everybody piles into the back, twisting together in the makeshift bed like a big gray bowtie. Terezi's sharp little ankle is next to your face, your head is on Karkat's chest, and Gamzee has his face in your stomach.

He blows you a razzberry.

* * *

><p>You arrive at the house—your <em>home<em>—at precisely seven in the morning. Nobody bothers to unpack. You knock on the door because you might have grown up here and are possibly the legal owner but you haven't been here since highschool. You don't know who's still around, or even if anybody you know is currently living here. People have an affinity to swoop in and out of this house at violent intervals.

Vriska opens the door. You do not notice that she is short an eye and an arm, you do not care that she spent her childhood traumatizing you. You fall forward and hug her for all you're worth. She gives a strangled yelp.

"Jesus fuck, Kanaya." She whispers vaguely. You try to say something to her and the words are muffled in her chest; good thing, because you probably would have said something that would make her call you a wimp. "Jesus." She tentatively hugs you back as you realize you are actually crying, something you haven't done in a very long time. She doesn't even snap at you that you're going to get green stains in her pajamas.

Somebody coughs cynically behind you. Vriska awkwardly shrugs you off, but keeps her remaining arm around your shoulders, pressing you tight next to her. "Who're these jokers?" She nods to your friends whom, you guess, might look a little odd and motley under these circumstances.

You open your mouth to politely introduce your posse but instead of names you turn your face into her neck and let her know "oh God, Vriska, it's so good to be home."

Her crochet-hook fingers twist in your short hair and she kisses your forehead. "Like hell it is."


End file.
